Thomas Jefferson - Democratic Republican
Alexander Hamilton - Federalist
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
DANA MILBANK & THE MORMONS
GLENN BECK IN HIS STUDY
Dana Milbank used to be a favorite pundit of mine. Then he got into some scuffle with Keith Olbermann and kind of faded away.
I recall that Mr. Milbank had taken a definite turn to the right and I was not amused at reading some column he wrote.
Wiki talks about this MSNBC scuffle and something called Mouth Piece Theater. He and his buddy got into trouble using the ‘b’ word with reference to Secretary Clinton.
Anyway, whether Dana has indeed moved to the right or back to the left, he is in the attack mode against beckerhead. And he wrote a rather interesting piece about Beck, Hatch and the Morman Church. But he did so thoughtfully and provides some real insights into this bullshit claim of Beck’s concerning our Constitution.
Now in a clip with Howard Kurtz which I found at Mediamatters, Milbank is cross examined at length by Howard. And Dana stood up to it rather well.
I mean he has done his homework on Beck. He recites the number of times that Hitler is referred to on beckerhead’s TV and radio shows. And he refers to the number of times that the word ‘fascist’ was used. Really well argued case for finding that Beck is not just out of his fucking mind but that he is inciting others to violence.
Kurtz does not wish to breach his ‘neutrality’ in all of this since Howard is a prick anyway. (By the way he is leaving the Washington Post after 29 years and moving to The Daily Beast of all places)
(Milbank tells Howard Kurtz why Beck is dangerous.http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/201010030006)
I bring all this up because I am beginning to be a fan of Milbank again and because he brings to me something of an epiphany.
Dana recites some history concerning the Morman Church. Before I begin, we must all remember that Harry Reid is a Morman, that there are fine and upstanding liberal Mormans, and that we should not deride a religion no matter what rituals they have that involve underwear and such.
The phrase is often attributed to the Prophet Joseph Smith, founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or Mormon Church. Smith is believed to have said in 1840 that when the Constitution hangs by a thread, elders of the Mormon Church will step in -- on the proverbial white horse -- to save the country.
When the Constitution of the United States hangs, as it were, upon a single thread, they will have to call for the 'Mormon' Elders to save it from utter destruction; and they will step forth and do it," Brigham Young, Smith's successor as head of the church, wrote in 1855.
Was it just a coincidence in wording, or was Beck, a 1999 Mormon convert, speaking in coded language about the need to fulfill the Mormon prophecy? A conversation on Beck's radio show ten days earlier would seem to rule out coincidence. Beck was interviewing Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah, also a Mormon, when he said: "I heard Barack Obama talk about the Constitution and I thought, we are at the point or we are very near the point where our Constitution is hanging by a thread."
"Well, let me tell you something," Hatch responded. "I believe the Constitution is hanging by a thread."
Days after Beck's Fox show started in January 2009, he had Hatch on, and again prompted him: "I believe our Constitution hangs by a thread."…Before the Mormons went west, Smith traveled to Washington seeking help for his oppressed followers and received nothing but frustration. Rather than turning on the government, however, "They considered themselves the last Real Americans, the legitimate heirs of the pilgrims and Founding Fathers," Pat Bagley wrote in the Salt Lake Tribune. "And, they believed, the very survival of the Constitution depended on the Saints. From Smith on, LDS leaders prophesied the Constitution would one day hang by a thread, only to be saved by Mormons."….. there is a Beckian twist in his version of the prophecy. Unlike the church leaders' versions, Beck's vision carries the possibility of a bloody end. On the night of Feb. 24, 2009, Beck outlined this prospect for his viewers. People who "don't trust the government," he said, would "see the government as violating the Constitution, and they will see themselves as defenders of the Constitution. Not a good mix. Then they take matters into their own hands."
It was Glenn Beck in a nutshell: White Horse Prophecy meets horsemen of the apocalypse.
I find some real insight in this essay.
This country was at war with the Mormons for some period of time. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mormon_pioneers
For one thing, polygamy was not favored by most Americans.
On the other hand, to just dismiss an entire religion with millions of members is stupid.
I mean, there are many Protestant church goers who believe to this day that the Roman Catholic Church is a cult. Of course it was 2000 years ago.
The only point I am making here is that when Dana Milbank comes after you, he comes armed.
Monday, October 4, 2010
Women Politics, Election Cakes and Campaign Quilts
Before women were able to vote, they supported their political ideals with their home arts. One of these arts was quilting and they have left us with a history of political quilt patterns that are still made and enjoyed today. To understand how these quilts played a roll in our elections in the first half of the 19th century, we will have to look at how they lived.
Most of the families lived in homes that only had a couple of rooms and a loft. Building a house was expensive until the 1850’s when balloon construction was developed and less wood was needed and home building became less expensive. The homes had a main room that had a cooking hearth and the family did all their activities there. Off to one side a room was added for the parents bedroom and the loft provided a space for the rest of the family to sleep. Sometimes the youngest children or elderly members slept in the main living area which held the “good bed.” This was the guest bed and usually was a trundle bed so that visiting friends and family had some where to sleep. Travel was hard and slow so visitors would spend the night and return home the next day. Also travelers would stop at a home on the main roads and ask to stay the night because there was very few inns to stay in when traveling long distances. The travelers would pay for their lodgings and bring news from other towns. On the good bed, the best feather ticks, linens and quilts was kept. Here on the good bed, was a place were women took pride in showing off and displaying her needle skills and talents. Enterprising ladies would place a sign on the main roads to invite travelers to their homes in order to supplement their families income.
Elections was held usually in early May after the roads were passable or in early November before winter weather. That way the election would not interfere with planting crops and the harvest. Therefore voters could take time to travel long distance to the polling place and arrive early enough to take part in the electioneering. The towns that had the election polls would get ready for all the visitors and make it a holiday. In the New England States the only holidays that Puritans celebrated was Thanksgiving and elections. Everyone that had a room for guests would open their homes up to the voters. All this was usually coordinated by the party leaders to attract voters to vote for their candidates. So the best cooks and bakers would make special meals to sell to the visitors during all the speeches and campaigning. One of the special treats that was offered was a slice of election cake that was a popular fruit cake after a vote was cast.
http://www.archive.org/stream/hartfordelection00johnrich#page/36/mode/2up
Sometimes the homes that took in guests in the election towns and on the roads leading to the town would have a quilt that was made to express political support for a party. Quilts made from new fabrics was a expensive luxury in the first half of the 19th century, just like it is today. All the fashions leaders was the ladies from wealth and they had the time to make fine appliquéd quilts. Most wealthy families supported the Whig Party and showed it with a quilt pattern named for the party called the Whig Rose. Traditionally it was made in madder red, pink, chrome yellow and green on white muslin.
http://www.quiltindex.org/whigrose.php
Being such a beautiful appliqué pattern, many ladies even in rural areas made a version of this quilt to decorate their home following the fashion of the time. Also it could have been an expression of their support for public school education. Which was part of the Whig Party platform to build public schools and normal schools to train women teachers to educate children to build a better economy for the country. Public schools was a radical new idea in education and was not being done in Europe and an issue that would have appealed to mothers.
Another notable pattern in quilts in this period of time was the Whig defeat pattern.
http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Multimedia.jsp?id=m-4333
Ladies that supported the Democrat Party would have made this pattern. It was linked to the election of James Polk a Democrat that defeated Henry Clay a Whig in 1844. The block was both pieced and appliquéd traditionally in madder red, white, blue and indigo. The appliquéd plumes traditionally was done in indigo and represented rooster tail feathers because the rooster was the symbol of the Democrat Party at that time. It was a pattern that was suitable for scrap quilting and would have been done in less affluent homes of immigrants that supported the Democrats. The quilters also made of version of the Whig Rose pattern that they called the Democratic Rose that was less elaborate and more folk art and the pink sometimes would have been replaced with cheddar orange..
http://www.rogersarkansas.com/museum/donation/whigrosequilt.htm
The campaign quilt for James Buchanan was the Rose of Sharon. He was the democrat candidate that won the election in 1856. Former Whig President Millard Fillmore nominated by the No Nothing Party and John Fremont the first candidate of the Republican Party were defeated by Buchanan. This was the end of the area of the Whig Party that had been divided by the issue of slavery and could no longer hold a coalition together. This pattern was a red rose because Buchanan was from Lancaster, Pa. In the War of the Roses in England the Lancaster’s was the red rose and the York’s was the white rose.
http://www.wku.edu/library/onlinexh/naturesbounty/textiles/07.html
Probably the most famous quilts of this political period was the Baltimore Album quilts. They were presentation quilts made by a group of wealthy women known as the Ladies of Baltimore. A presentation quilt was made and given to men that was retiring from office or from a business. Many of the ladies would buy the block kits from a designer Mary Simon. Her husband owned a rug shop in Baltimore and had immigrated from Prussia. According to journals left by these ladies they would meet often to make these quilts to give at a special occasions including weddings and birthdays. Many of the blocks in the quilts that survived in museums have political themes. The cornucopia with flowers is actually the knit caps that the Whigs put on the polls out side of their homes during the American Revolution and expressed the Whig party affiliation of the person that the quilt was given too. The quilts were only made for 10 years and stopped after a cholera epidemic that devastated the population of Baltimore in 1854.
http://www.antiquesjournal.com/Pages04/Monthly_pages/april08/quilts.html
Women do have a history of their own in political activities that isn’t well known but they left clues in their quilting, recipes, and journals. Historians of the time didn’t see them important enough to write about it. But with out their help in opening up their homes for guests and cooking for the elections it would not have been possible to have efficient elections in the early days. Also the Whig party only lasted for 20 years when the American art form of quilting first became popular.
I am looking forward to your comments and questions
Most of the families lived in homes that only had a couple of rooms and a loft. Building a house was expensive until the 1850’s when balloon construction was developed and less wood was needed and home building became less expensive. The homes had a main room that had a cooking hearth and the family did all their activities there. Off to one side a room was added for the parents bedroom and the loft provided a space for the rest of the family to sleep. Sometimes the youngest children or elderly members slept in the main living area which held the “good bed.” This was the guest bed and usually was a trundle bed so that visiting friends and family had some where to sleep. Travel was hard and slow so visitors would spend the night and return home the next day. Also travelers would stop at a home on the main roads and ask to stay the night because there was very few inns to stay in when traveling long distances. The travelers would pay for their lodgings and bring news from other towns. On the good bed, the best feather ticks, linens and quilts was kept. Here on the good bed, was a place were women took pride in showing off and displaying her needle skills and talents. Enterprising ladies would place a sign on the main roads to invite travelers to their homes in order to supplement their families income.
Elections was held usually in early May after the roads were passable or in early November before winter weather. That way the election would not interfere with planting crops and the harvest. Therefore voters could take time to travel long distance to the polling place and arrive early enough to take part in the electioneering. The towns that had the election polls would get ready for all the visitors and make it a holiday. In the New England States the only holidays that Puritans celebrated was Thanksgiving and elections. Everyone that had a room for guests would open their homes up to the voters. All this was usually coordinated by the party leaders to attract voters to vote for their candidates. So the best cooks and bakers would make special meals to sell to the visitors during all the speeches and campaigning. One of the special treats that was offered was a slice of election cake that was a popular fruit cake after a vote was cast.
http://www.archive.org/stream/hartfordelection00johnrich#page/36/mode/2up
Sometimes the homes that took in guests in the election towns and on the roads leading to the town would have a quilt that was made to express political support for a party. Quilts made from new fabrics was a expensive luxury in the first half of the 19th century, just like it is today. All the fashions leaders was the ladies from wealth and they had the time to make fine appliquéd quilts. Most wealthy families supported the Whig Party and showed it with a quilt pattern named for the party called the Whig Rose. Traditionally it was made in madder red, pink, chrome yellow and green on white muslin.
http://www.quiltindex.org/whigrose.php
Being such a beautiful appliqué pattern, many ladies even in rural areas made a version of this quilt to decorate their home following the fashion of the time. Also it could have been an expression of their support for public school education. Which was part of the Whig Party platform to build public schools and normal schools to train women teachers to educate children to build a better economy for the country. Public schools was a radical new idea in education and was not being done in Europe and an issue that would have appealed to mothers.
Another notable pattern in quilts in this period of time was the Whig defeat pattern.
http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Multimedia.jsp?id=m-4333
Ladies that supported the Democrat Party would have made this pattern. It was linked to the election of James Polk a Democrat that defeated Henry Clay a Whig in 1844. The block was both pieced and appliquéd traditionally in madder red, white, blue and indigo. The appliquéd plumes traditionally was done in indigo and represented rooster tail feathers because the rooster was the symbol of the Democrat Party at that time. It was a pattern that was suitable for scrap quilting and would have been done in less affluent homes of immigrants that supported the Democrats. The quilters also made of version of the Whig Rose pattern that they called the Democratic Rose that was less elaborate and more folk art and the pink sometimes would have been replaced with cheddar orange..
http://www.rogersarkansas.com/museum/donation/whigrosequilt.htm
The campaign quilt for James Buchanan was the Rose of Sharon. He was the democrat candidate that won the election in 1856. Former Whig President Millard Fillmore nominated by the No Nothing Party and John Fremont the first candidate of the Republican Party were defeated by Buchanan. This was the end of the area of the Whig Party that had been divided by the issue of slavery and could no longer hold a coalition together. This pattern was a red rose because Buchanan was from Lancaster, Pa. In the War of the Roses in England the Lancaster’s was the red rose and the York’s was the white rose.
http://www.wku.edu/library/onlinexh/naturesbounty/textiles/07.html
Probably the most famous quilts of this political period was the Baltimore Album quilts. They were presentation quilts made by a group of wealthy women known as the Ladies of Baltimore. A presentation quilt was made and given to men that was retiring from office or from a business. Many of the ladies would buy the block kits from a designer Mary Simon. Her husband owned a rug shop in Baltimore and had immigrated from Prussia. According to journals left by these ladies they would meet often to make these quilts to give at a special occasions including weddings and birthdays. Many of the blocks in the quilts that survived in museums have political themes. The cornucopia with flowers is actually the knit caps that the Whigs put on the polls out side of their homes during the American Revolution and expressed the Whig party affiliation of the person that the quilt was given too. The quilts were only made for 10 years and stopped after a cholera epidemic that devastated the population of Baltimore in 1854.
http://www.antiquesjournal.com/Pages04/Monthly_pages/april08/quilts.html
Women do have a history of their own in political activities that isn’t well known but they left clues in their quilting, recipes, and journals. Historians of the time didn’t see them important enough to write about it. But with out their help in opening up their homes for guests and cooking for the elections it would not have been possible to have efficient elections in the early days. Also the Whig party only lasted for 20 years when the American art form of quilting first became popular.
I am looking forward to your comments and questions
Capitalism RULZ!
Some months ago, I posted an alternative, more patriotic, capitalist State of the Union address – one that lovers of liberty and warriors against Statism would like. In it, I envisioned the President embracing true capitalism and offering solutions to wipe out the scurge of Socialism. For those who may have missed that rambling screed, here it is.
But I am heartened to note that I am not the only one to have realized how widespread the infection of socialism was in this nation. Specifically, I would like to commend Obion County, Tennessee, the city of South Fulton, and its mayor – the honorable David Crocker. Thank you to ThinkProgress for alerting me to this story.
If I may recount to you a portion of my earlier entry, I noted the following;
“We don’t need a tax to support firefighting efforts. Private firefighting companies can and will allow patriotic Americans to only pay when they themselves have an applicable emergency. Most Americans go their entire lives with no occasion to call on a fire department. Why the hell should they be forced to pay for firefighters to put out a fire started by some loser smoking in bed?”
See, Mr. Crocker and the all Republican county commission that he sits on also decided long ago that Fire fighting services provided by local government and paid for by taxes are antithetical to the capitalist ideals of this great nation. South Fulton instituted a very ingenious program to do away with entitlements like public fire fighting departments supported by burdensome taxation – they came up with the novel concept of fee-based subscription fire fighting services. And recently we saw patriotism and the American way in its full red, white and blue glory.
It seems that a miserly gentleman decided that he didn’t need to pay the $75 annual subscription price for the services of Obion county Fire Department. As a result, his home burned to the ground while firefighter stood by, unfortunately unable to help without setting a precedent that could have led to more citizens getting tempted by the evil lure of Socialism.
Here is a local TV channels report on the matter.
Once again, on behalf of all soldiers in the army against tyranny, I’d like to thank Mayor Crocker, the County Commission and all of the brave firefighters for letting capitalist Darwinism run its course. Perhaps this will give all those socialist-curious Obamaites pause to reflect on the error of their ways.
God Bless America.
But I am heartened to note that I am not the only one to have realized how widespread the infection of socialism was in this nation. Specifically, I would like to commend Obion County, Tennessee, the city of South Fulton, and its mayor – the honorable David Crocker. Thank you to ThinkProgress for alerting me to this story.
If I may recount to you a portion of my earlier entry, I noted the following;
“We don’t need a tax to support firefighting efforts. Private firefighting companies can and will allow patriotic Americans to only pay when they themselves have an applicable emergency. Most Americans go their entire lives with no occasion to call on a fire department. Why the hell should they be forced to pay for firefighters to put out a fire started by some loser smoking in bed?”
See, Mr. Crocker and the all Republican county commission that he sits on also decided long ago that Fire fighting services provided by local government and paid for by taxes are antithetical to the capitalist ideals of this great nation. South Fulton instituted a very ingenious program to do away with entitlements like public fire fighting departments supported by burdensome taxation – they came up with the novel concept of fee-based subscription fire fighting services. And recently we saw patriotism and the American way in its full red, white and blue glory.
It seems that a miserly gentleman decided that he didn’t need to pay the $75 annual subscription price for the services of Obion county Fire Department. As a result, his home burned to the ground while firefighter stood by, unfortunately unable to help without setting a precedent that could have led to more citizens getting tempted by the evil lure of Socialism.
Here is a local TV channels report on the matter.
Once again, on behalf of all soldiers in the army against tyranny, I’d like to thank Mayor Crocker, the County Commission and all of the brave firefighters for letting capitalist Darwinism run its course. Perhaps this will give all those socialist-curious Obamaites pause to reflect on the error of their ways.
God Bless America.
Sunday, October 3, 2010
Winter
As it is, by the way, it arrived only eight days earlier this year than it did last year, but it is here.
And there is no use in mourning its arrival. It is inevitable as the last actual Commissioner of Baseball has explained to us:
And there is no use in mourning its arrival. It is inevitable as the last actual Commissioner of Baseball has explained to us:
It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone. You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops. Today, October 2, a Sunday of rain and broken branches and leaf-clogged drains and slick streets, it stopped, and summer was gone.
DOPPELGANGERS
In fiction, folklore, and popular culture, a doppelgänger (pronunciation (help·info)) is a tangible double of a living person that typically represents evil. In the vernacular, the word doppelgänger has come to refer (as in German) to any double or look-alike of a person. The word is also used to describe the sensation of having glimpsed oneself in peripheral vision, in a position where there is no chance that it could have been a reflection. Doppelgängers are often perceived as a sinister form of bilocation and generally regarded as harbingers of bad luck. In some traditions, a doppelgänger seen by a person's friends or relatives portends illness or danger, while seeing one's own doppelgänger is an omen of death. In Norse mythology, a vardøger is a ghostly double who precedes a living person and is seen performing their actions in advance. In Ancient Egyptian mythology, a "ka" was a tangible "spirit double" having the same memories and feeling as the original person. In one Egyptian myth entitled "The Greek Princess", an Egyptian view of the Trojan War, a ka of Helen was used to mislead Paris of Troy, helping to stop the war.
Spooky stuff.
I mean the Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman was my favorite movie as a kid.
But I understood the Wolfman.
I mean in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, a good citizen drinks some beverage and turns into a raving lunatic. Well, we can find that sort of result in any bar or pub on the planet; especially around closing time.
And watching Lon Cheney, Jr. wake up with few memories of the night before as well as a mighty hangover, brings to mind similar conclusions.
Vampires were never ‘my thing’ as they like to say.
It bothered me greatly as a child that church goers arrived at their local meeting place to feast on body and blood; even though it was somehow symbolic, my priest guaranteed that we really were feasting on body and blood. Yuck.
But there has been a tendency for some members of the species called Homo Sapiens to feast upon the bodies of slain enemies; and sometimes even slain friends.
Ghosts never meant much to me. Shakespeare uses a ghost as a device in Hamlet. And he does so with a little mystery and intrigue.
Does the Dane see his father’s dead spirit, or not?
And who can forget Our Town for chrissakes?
Well others have just taken this literary device and made it into something else; dead spirits running rampant across the screen.
The concept of the ghost is problematic anyway. If you are immaterial, how can you affect the material?
The Zombie which is nothing but an outgrowth from the Mummy movies has taken over the silver screen.
I just can’t understand the concept. Dead people rot. I suppose the mummy is different because the Egyptians took the inner organs out of the body. The corpse is then covered in magical ointments and such so that the shell remains in tact.
How this hollow man could become a threat has always been beyond me.
And the Zombies? Their organs are rotting. But these zombies in the movies just keep on keeping on, anyway.
The Woody Harrelson movie and the English zombie movie are funny. I mean beating these dead monsters with bats is hilarious at times.
It is kind of like letting a part of us loose.
I am a peaceful sort of person; probably because I am a coward at heart.
But the vision of the rotting corpses of Sarah Palin, Sharon Angle, Michelle Bachmann, Meg Whitman, Carly Fiorlini, Jim DeMint, Jim Inhofe, and countless others of the inhumane persuasion, wandering through the streets while my friends and I beat them back with baseball bats….but I digress.
This post is supposed to be about doppelgangers anyway.
Like the paragraph in Wiki demonstrates, these ghost walkers do not represent the dead, as such.
The Egyptians had the concepts of the Ba and the Ka. And let me tell you, these are confusing concepts because I have read at least fifty versions of what the Ba and the Ka are supposed to be. There is no consensus among the experts.
The Ba is kind of a shadow.
Whatever you do, the Ba does.
But when you die, so does your Ba.
Not so for the Ka.
I frankly believe that we have the concept of the Trinity because of the Ba and the Ka. But that is a subject for another post.
Anyway, the Pharaoh’s Ka traverses the heavens to the Star Sirius in the Orion Constellation following his death. The Ba just evaporates into nothingness.
So the Ka is kind of like our concept of the soul.
But the doppelganger is something else.
I watched The Broken again last night; chills me to the bone. I mean it is difficult to keep this movie on without changing channels.
The closest metaphor I can come up with here vis a vis the doppelganger is the idea of another earth traveling in our orbit. The twin earth is always hidden from our view by the Sun. The orb is there, we just will never see it; experience it. But since the introduction of our ships into space, the concept of a twin earth evaporated like the ba of your deceased grandmother.
The idea is that each of us has a twin. Sometimes ephemeral and sometimes not so ephemeral.
You look into the mirror one day and your reflection does not seem like it is cooperating. You are expressing confusion and your reflection is smiling.
You are walking down the street and peripherally you see yourself walking down another artery.
Stories about doppelgangers gleaned from google are fun. You see your brother washing dishes in the family abode when you know he is in Paris. You see your mother in the supermarket just after you spoke with her on the phone as she rested in Miami.
Of course, we as human beings must splain things. We really know very little as a species. I mean Sarah Palin almost became Vice President of the United States—and you thought Dan Quail was bad!!
So the non compis mentis among us will assume there really are doppelgangers and then get into the quantum mechanics theories to explain it. Using string theory, idiots will posit parallel universes and then posit that we have doubles residing in some twin universe.
Others simply take a psychological view of all this. We find ourselves in REM sleep where doppelgangers abound. We see ourselves doing things.
Then there is the psychiatric view of the doppelganger. We have to sides of our brain and doctors have actually electrically fucked with one side of the brain and the subject reports the doppelganger affect.
The doppelganger is not just our ‘twin’ but our evil twin. If the doppelganger manages to replace us, our persona in this universe perpetrates evil.
I think this idea has promise.
Now this Avlon guy from Daily Beast is one of those ‘fair’ fellas. In covering the left’s open air meeting in Washington D.C., he just lumps the people with the tea partiers; they are all wingnuts.
Jon Stewart has compared Ed Shultz to Rush and this sickens me greatly. Stewart is pretending that he is another of those ‘fair’ fellas and so I will not watch him anymore.
Rick Sanchez is a nice enough ‘journalist’. But he has this chip on his shoulder. He is Hispanic and likes to roll his ‘r’ s while pronouncing Hispanic surnames and locations. He feels put upon. He feels that there are not enough Hispanics in MSM.
So his diarrhea of the mouth recently got him fired. All he was attempting to say was that Hispanics are discriminated against and Jews are not. It came out as JEWS CONTROL THE MEDIA. Hahahahaah. I really do not think Rupert is Jewish. If he is part Jewish, he certainly does not fit the category of ‘Liberal Jew’. ha
But Sanchez, who should be embracing the Democratic Party as the only party that does not step on the face of the Hispanics, always wished to be one of those ‘fair’ fellas. Oh the repubs have much to say just as the dems do.
Fuck you Sanchez.
And the Wolfman on CNN. Jesus H. Christ.
I mean he might say something like: So you do like to read all sorts of papers Governor Palin?
So you feel America is being threatened by Iraqi Muslims Mr. Vice-President?
So you feel that it is better not to disclose the amount spent on the military while we are at war Mr. Rumsfeld?
The Wolfman definitely feels he is one of those ‘fair’ fellas.
I have to admit that I did not like Tim Russert. He reminded me too much of Ethel Merman.
But Timmy liked to embarrass assholes like DeMint. So at the least he was entertaining.
Fuck fairness. I think the problem in this universe is doppelgangers.
Take Michael Moore. Michael is a good man. Mr. Moore seeks universal health care. Mr. Moore seeks to abolish graft on Wall Street. Mr. Moore seeks aid and comfort for the poor. Mr. Moore seeks peace and a reexamination of our military industrial complex. Mr. Moore is concerned with the growing gap between the rich and the poor.
Michael Moore’s doppelganger is rush Limbaugh.
The latest from rush:
Limbaugh: "Dumbo" Obama and "Gumbo" Carville, who "looks like he was born on a UFO," could be "official greeters" for extraterrestrials
Limbaugh claims Obama "respects" New Black Panthers
Limbaugh: The "choice" for 2010, 2012 "boils down to ... either Obama and the Democrats or America -- you can't have both"
Limbaugh hopes Dems "are totaled" in November "head-on collision" with voters, "in a political sense of course"
Limbaugh: "Barack Imam Hoover Obama" is playing off of "class envy" by letting Bush tax cuts on wealthy expire
Limbaugh says he hopes Dems "lose 100 seats" and are "wiped out" in "a tsunami"
Rush is "not going to sit here and put up with" caller informing him that Obama cut taxes
The streets are going to burn in this country if something doesn’t happen.
Dick Cheney is easily the most corrupt and evil politician I have ever set my eyes upon.
I think cheney is Biden’s doppelganger. I mean Joe Biden has dedicated his life to public service. Joe Biden never funneled even thousands of dollars to some mysterious corporation let alone a hundred billion dollars. Joe Biden worked for the interests of the working man and woman, the poor and dispossessed, and against the corrupt influences of big business his entire life.
Beck is definitely the doppelganger of Martin Luther King, Jr. for obvious reasons.
Sean Hannity is the doppelganger of Chet Huntley I should think.
Sarah Palin is the doppelganger of Eleanor Roosevelt.
Michelle Bachman is the doppelganger of Ann Frank.
Mud Wrestler Meg Whitman is the doppelganger of Harriet Tubman.
Carly Fiorlini is the doppelganger of Sister Theresa.
Well I have rambled on much too long here.
The end.
Saturday, October 2, 2010
Being There
As well described by cmaukonen the other day,there are things that cannot always be fully understood unless you lived through it. The unspeakably brilliant Jill Lepore explained to Rachel Maddow last night why that is not always so, and, frankly, why Barth the amateur historian is truly an amateur,
but to have missed the Vietnam War period means that much of what passes for political thought these days must be confusing.
It is hard to imagine, for instance, that missing that time you could fully understand how much "the war" overwhelmed almost every conversation, even those having little to do with politics. It got to the point that Randy Newman had to explain that when
For righteous reasons the war swamped everything else. Your faithful blogger was in high school during the time when those older were being drafted en masse to serve in that meat grinder, and was fortunate enough to hold a nice large number when the draft lottery covering his birth year was held, so a certain level of urgency did not apply, but until the summer of 1973, when a new obsession swept the country (a year too late to do what needed to be done), it was hard to talk about any other issue.
The result of that obsession was a new and divisive politics and it gave the king of such destructive debate, Richard Nixon, the eight years in the White House that were truncated when his thuggishness could no longer be ignored even by Republicans.
In the meantime, though, the Roosevelt majority destroyed itself. Some of what followed was, to be sure, the result of Southerners who had identified themselves as Democrats in memory of the party that opposed Abraham Lincoln and a reconstruction after the civil war which would have moved against racial segregation, deciding that it was time to leave the party that enacted civil rights legislation.
In 1968, though, it was the war, far more than anything else, that caused so many of the elements of the coalition that built and nurtured the New Deal into the Fair Deal, the New Frontier and then the Great Society. As liberals and progressives abandoned President Johnson and his party forcing him to forgo a campaign for re-election and watched it nominate Vice President Humphrey to succeed him after Senator Eugene McCarthy faded under the weight of the stronger and more inspirational campaign of Senator Robert f. Kennedy who was then murdered, its splintered remnants could not come together in time to prevent Nixon's election.
The divisions within the party, and within families and relationships have not completely healed over forty years later. We all know people only now able to experiment with contacts with those with whom they were close until the war divided them. For all the expressions of gratitude to those who give their life or limbs or mental acuity in service of our country, those who tried to avoid contact with the damaged people who returned to our campuses after a tour in 'Nam, have a long way to go to repair that damage.
The Democratic Party still wrestles with the legacy of that sad time. It has pockets that no longer trust the government to which President Roosevelt assigned the duty of being the ultimate protector of those unable to protect themselves. They remain suspicious of all efforts to protect the nation's security, and of law enforcement in this country as if J. Edgar Hoover were still preparing files on dissidents for the political use of the president whose administration compiled an enemies list.
To many their vote is an expression of principle and conscience. If a candidate or a president takes a position or maintains a view that violate either, they cannot be supported. It matters not that by withholding their vote they enable forces of gluttony, of selfishness, and even of out and out craziness to take over our government. Indeed, in a perverse way, they agree with their tormentors on only one thing: the government is bad.
As Randy Rhodes once said to Ralph Nader on the late Air America, we can longer afford that type of thought. Some of us never thought we could and urged votes for Vice President Humphrey to stop the evil that was able to take over our country. We even voted to re-elect President Carter because of the alternative and supported the re-election of President Clinton, even those his personal obsessions made irrelevant our worries and our ideas.
A voter does not have to agree with this blogger's views about the best and most inspirational president we have had since Nixon's triumph, to understand that what is at stake now is the very future of our government and, perhaps, the lives of millions of us. That president made the case exceedingly well earlier this week, again, and instead of reading further about the despair that floats all around, it might be better to spend a few minutes listening that what he had to say:
but to have missed the Vietnam War period means that much of what passes for political thought these days must be confusing.
It is hard to imagine, for instance, that missing that time you could fully understand how much "the war" overwhelmed almost every conversation, even those having little to do with politics. It got to the point that Randy Newman had to explain that when
entertaining a little girl in my rooms, Lord
With California wines and French parfumes, Lord
She started to talk to me about the War, Lord
I said, "I don't want to talk about the War."
For righteous reasons the war swamped everything else. Your faithful blogger was in high school during the time when those older were being drafted en masse to serve in that meat grinder, and was fortunate enough to hold a nice large number when the draft lottery covering his birth year was held, so a certain level of urgency did not apply, but until the summer of 1973, when a new obsession swept the country (a year too late to do what needed to be done), it was hard to talk about any other issue.
The result of that obsession was a new and divisive politics and it gave the king of such destructive debate, Richard Nixon, the eight years in the White House that were truncated when his thuggishness could no longer be ignored even by Republicans.
In the meantime, though, the Roosevelt majority destroyed itself. Some of what followed was, to be sure, the result of Southerners who had identified themselves as Democrats in memory of the party that opposed Abraham Lincoln and a reconstruction after the civil war which would have moved against racial segregation, deciding that it was time to leave the party that enacted civil rights legislation.
In 1968, though, it was the war, far more than anything else, that caused so many of the elements of the coalition that built and nurtured the New Deal into the Fair Deal, the New Frontier and then the Great Society. As liberals and progressives abandoned President Johnson and his party forcing him to forgo a campaign for re-election and watched it nominate Vice President Humphrey to succeed him after Senator Eugene McCarthy faded under the weight of the stronger and more inspirational campaign of Senator Robert f. Kennedy who was then murdered, its splintered remnants could not come together in time to prevent Nixon's election.
The divisions within the party, and within families and relationships have not completely healed over forty years later. We all know people only now able to experiment with contacts with those with whom they were close until the war divided them. For all the expressions of gratitude to those who give their life or limbs or mental acuity in service of our country, those who tried to avoid contact with the damaged people who returned to our campuses after a tour in 'Nam, have a long way to go to repair that damage.
The Democratic Party still wrestles with the legacy of that sad time. It has pockets that no longer trust the government to which President Roosevelt assigned the duty of being the ultimate protector of those unable to protect themselves. They remain suspicious of all efforts to protect the nation's security, and of law enforcement in this country as if J. Edgar Hoover were still preparing files on dissidents for the political use of the president whose administration compiled an enemies list.
To many their vote is an expression of principle and conscience. If a candidate or a president takes a position or maintains a view that violate either, they cannot be supported. It matters not that by withholding their vote they enable forces of gluttony, of selfishness, and even of out and out craziness to take over our government. Indeed, in a perverse way, they agree with their tormentors on only one thing: the government is bad.
As Randy Rhodes once said to Ralph Nader on the late Air America, we can longer afford that type of thought. Some of us never thought we could and urged votes for Vice President Humphrey to stop the evil that was able to take over our country. We even voted to re-elect President Carter because of the alternative and supported the re-election of President Clinton, even those his personal obsessions made irrelevant our worries and our ideas.
A voter does not have to agree with this blogger's views about the best and most inspirational president we have had since Nixon's triumph, to understand that what is at stake now is the very future of our government and, perhaps, the lives of millions of us. That president made the case exceedingly well earlier this week, again, and instead of reading further about the despair that floats all around, it might be better to spend a few minutes listening that what he had to say:
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)